Lamb: the Gospel According to Biff, Christ's Childhood Pal

clean-shaven and wore his hair cut short, so that it formed a helmet of ringlets on his head; the other had long hair with his beard plaited and curled in the style I had seen on some Greeks. Although they wore no jewelry, and their clothes were no more fancy than my own, there was an air of wealth about them both. I thought it might have been power, but if it was, it wasn’t the self-conscious power of the Pharisees. If nothing else, they were self-assured.
    The one with the long hair approached Joshua and kneeled before him. “Rabbi, we’ve heard you speak of the coming of the kingdom and we want to join you. We want to help spread the Word.”
    Joshua looked at the man for a long time, smiling to himself, before he spoke. He took the man by the shoulders and lifted him. “Stand up. You are welcome, friends.”
    The stranger seemed baffled. He looked back at his friend, then at me, as if I had some answer to his confusion. “This is Simon,” he said, nodding toward his friend. “My name is Judas Iscariot.”
    “I know who you are,” Joshua said. “I’ve been waiting for you.”
    And so we became fifteen: Joshua, Maggie, and me; Bartholomew, the Cynic; Peter and Andrew, John and James, the fishermen; Matthew, the tax collector; Nathaniel of Cana, the young nitwit; Philip and Thaddeus, who had been followers of John the Baptist; Thomas the twin, who was a loony; and the Zealots, Simon the Canaanite and Judas Iscariot. Fifteen went out into Galilee to preach the Holy Ghost, the coming of the kingdom, and the good news that the Son of God had arrived.

C hapter 28
    Joshua’s ministry was three years of preaching, sometimes three times a day, and although there were some high and low points, I could never remember the sermons word for word, but here’s the gist of almost every sermon I ever heard Joshua give.
You should be nice to people, even creeps.
And if you:
a) believed that Joshua was the Son of God (and)
b) he had come to save you from sin (and)
c) acknowledged the Holy Spirit within you (became as a little child, he would say)(and)
d) didn’t blaspheme the Holy Ghost (see c),
then you would:
e) live forever
f) someplace nice
g) probably heaven.
However, if you:
h) sinned (and/or)
i) were a hypocrite (and/or)
j) valued things over people (and)
k) didn’t do a, b, c, and d,
then you were:
l) fucked
    Which is the message that Joshua’s father had given him so many years ago, and which seemed, at the time, succinct to the point of rudeness, but made more sense after you listened to a few hundred sermons.
    That’s what he taught, that’s what we learned, that’s what we passed on to the people in the towns of Galilee. Not everybody was good at it, however, and some seemed to miss the point altogether. One day Joshua, Maggie, and I returned from preaching in Cana to find Bartholomew sitting by the synagogue at Capernaum, preaching the Gospel to a semicircle of dogs that sat around him. The dogs seemed spellbound, but then, Bart was wearing a flank steak as a hat, so I’m not sure it was his speaking skills that held their attention.
    Joshua snatched the steak off of Bartholomew’s head and tossed it into the street, where a dozen dogs suddenly found their faith. “Bart, Bart, Bart,” Josh said as he shook the big man by the shoulders, “don’t give what’s holy to dogs. Don’t cast your pearls before swine. You’re wasting the Word.”
    “I don’t have any pearls. I am slave to no possessions.”
    “It’s a metaphor, Bart,” Joshua said, deadpan. “It means don’t give the Word to those who aren’t ready to receive it.”
    “You mean like when you drowned the swine in Decapolis? They weren’t ready for it?”
    Joshua looked at me for help. I shrugged.
    Maggie said, “That’s exactly right, Bart. You got it.”
    “Oh, why didn’t you say so?” Bart said. “Okay guys, we’re off to preach the Word in Magdala.” He climbed to his feet and led his pack of disciples toward the lake.
    Joshua looked at Maggie. “That’s not what I meant at all.”
    “Yes it is,” she said, then she took off to find Johanna and Susanna, two women who had joined us and were learning to preach the gospel.
    “That’s not what I meant,” Joshua said to me.
    “Have you ever won an argument with her?”
    He shook his head.
    “Then say amen and let’s go see what Peter’s wife has cooked up.”
    The disciples were gathered around outside of Peter’s house, sitting on the logs we had arranged